Life After Death

AN OPEN INVITATION TO ALL QUANTUM PHYSICISTS AND STRING THEORISTS: With the exception of allusions to your field by the likes of Wayne Dyer and Marianne Williamson, I plead relative ignorance and invite you to weigh in on the thoughts I share today.

Doesn’t science teach that all matter is made up of particles that are in constant motion? Nothing is static. All matter therefore is alive in the sense it is continuously in process, continuously unfolding. Even after I die and life as I know it expires, what remains is matter that will continue to evolve even as my physical body decomposes.

And how about that which I cannot see... my thoughts, my ideas, my feelings, my longings, my will? Most of us have experienced intuition at work, knowing or sensing something without seeing or without prior knowledge. How can this be unless these too are made up of particles and therefore enjoy an existence of their own? And if this is the case, then they too are continuous, in process, ever unfolding.

I am awed by the cyclical rhythm that encompasses nature. Living in the midwest, the seasons illustrate this rhythm for me each year as I take in the shoots, buds and blossoms of spring, the abundance and fullness of summer, the transformation and harvest of autumn and the dormancy and stillness of winter. I witness the mild, balmy freshness of spring’s wind and the refreshing nurture of her rain marking the season of newness and promise. I experience the brightness and warmth of summer’s sun call forth the season of activity, enjoyment and play. I feel the crispness of autumn’s air return and behold the unparalleled splendor of fall’s colorful fireworks ushering in the season of recollection and melancholy. I prepare to be blanketed by winter’s snowy darkness in the season of repose. Every year the seasons retell nature’s story of life and makes me a participant.

I also hold in wonder nature’s way of reconstituting herself. Every summer newscasts flash images of fighting wildfires out west. A trip to Wyoming in the fall of 2000 made it all real to me as I saw and was saddened by the magnitude of devastation. But what seems like death and destruction is actually nature renewing herself for in the midst of the charred scars left in the wake of disaster emerges the shoots of new life. In the midwest there are hints of the same renewal along countless paths taken by tornados. My faith reassures me we will witness the same along the gulf coast devastated by Katrina’s fury.

The testimony of nature both consoles me and enlightens me that even though I love life fully, I need never fear death. Death is never an end. It is merely another passage in the continual unfolding and renewal of life. I believe something of me existed before I was born and something of me, something very real, will live on even after my death.

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